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“Though Palestinians will now have autonomy to lay pipelines, what they won’t have is any additional water to go in them – except with Israeli consent.”
“The argument over whether Israel has effective control over Gaza doesn’t alter the facts: Some 95 percent of the water in Gaza’s aquifer isn’t fit to drink, and purified water is distributed to households under unhygienic conditions; there is electricity for eight hours a day or less; about 100 million liters of sewage flow into the sea every day, both because of the power outages and because of delays in bringing spare parts and new pumps into Gaza; the residue of spent Israeli ammunition affects the environment and people’s health in ways that have yet to be investigated; unemployment has soared to about 40 percent, because Israeli movement restrictions have strangled production; and hundreds of thousands of young people who have never left this crowded enclave know no other reality.”
A Palestinian woman bakes bread in a tent outside her dwelling in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 19, 2016. IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS
Israel’s relentless attacks of water sources in the West Bank continue:
“ Nearly 200,000 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank do not have access to running water, according to Amnesty International.
Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq stated in a 2013 report that just half of Palestinian proposals for wells and improvement projects to the water network were approved by Israel between 1995 and 2008, compared to a 100 percent approval rate for Israeli projects.”
For more on the long plight of Bedouins see Facts & Context
In late 2016, Al Haq launched a new campaign to expose how Israel exploits natural resources in Palestine--and how this sustains the Occupation:
"The campaign highlights how the Israeli occupying forces have taken control of the water, land, gas and oil reserves, quarries and Dead Sea minerals, allowing it to sustain and expand the settlements, internationally recognized and condemned as illegal.
To pressure Israel and complicit corporations to stop exploiting natural resources which rightfully belong in the hands of the Palestinian people, Al-Haq calls for international, national and local sanctions that target individuals and companies involved in illegal activity, or forms of trade that support illegal activity."